*By Carlo Versano*
When freshman Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez floated the idea to Anderson Cooper on "60 Minutes" Sunday that the very wealthy pay a marginal tax rate as high as 70 percent, it got pundits and politicians all worked up. What exactly was the newly-elected, self-proclaimed radical proposing?
But as it turns out, a higher marginal tax rate is not particularly radical in the context of American history. Marginal tax rates, in which taxes increase as income rises, were as high as 90 percent under President Eisenhower, and were above 50 percent up until the second Reagan tax cut.
But according to Kyle Pomerleau, an economist at the Tax Foundation, a nonpartisan, business-friendly think tank, higher marginal rates do not bring in the promised revenue, and instead are an example of "the worst of both worlds."
Ocasio-Cortez's policy would "distort behavior" as individuals in the highest brackets would find ways to skirt the system. One of the ways they would do that, Pomerleau said, would be to stop selling assets defined as capital gains, which make up the majority of the taxable income at the top of the ladder and are only taxed when they're sold. "The amount of taxable realizations will plummet," Pomerleau said.
The safety net programs that progressives like Ocasio-Cortez seek to strengthen, like Medicare and Social Security, are better funded through other forms of taxation, Pomerleau said, such as a payroll tax, or the European model of sales, payroll, and value-added taxes. But the bottom line, he said, is that "everyone is going to have to pay higher taxes."
That is not a foregone conclusion. Those who advocate for very high marginal tax rates on the wealthy include some respected economists, including Nobel Prize-winner Peter Diamond. Diamond has estimated the top tax rate should be [73 percent](https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.25.4.165), while a pair of Berkeley economists have put it as high as [80 percent](http://ceg.berkeley.edu/research_117_2123314150.pdf).
Or as Paul Krugman [put it](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/05/opinion/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-tax-policy-dance.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage) on Monday: "The optimal tax rate on people with very high incomes is the rate that raises the maximum possible revenue."
At the very least, Ocasio-Cortez's ideas about the marginal tax rate, given that she has such an outsized megaphone within the Democratic Party at the moment, signals that Democrats are getting "more serious" about progressive income taxation, Pomerleau said.
And both sides can agree that the individual tax code is in need of simplification, he said. "There's still a lot of work to be done to fix that."
For full interview [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/ocasio-cortez-calls-for-radical-income-tax-reform).
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